Buffalo and Calgary continue to be great trading partners. Take your pick between Coleman (more goals), and Backlund (centre). Coleman is probably more ideal for a top 6 role than Backlund, but both dominate their competition 5v5. Backlund can come with retention, likely not Coleman though.
Coleman and Backlund definitely seem like the sort of players that could help Buffalo out. But it feels like Calgary have decided that Backlund is going to retire a Flame, for better or worse. They signed that deal and gave him trade protection under that pretext.
Coleman...he'd help in Buffalo, but i'm not sure he's the silver bullet they're looking for. He's coming off a "career year" but he's largely just a good complementary, hard working winger. Buffalo needs more of that, but how much a guy like that would move the needle...is unclear.
Farabee would actually be a hugely under the radar incredible pickup for Buffalo. That even strength production is no joke, and there's room with that roster (and Ruff would probably love him) to blossom into a lot more than that. The skill is clearly there.
Some Buffalo fans certainly think so and it may very well be the case. Some think he'd work best with a (veteran) play-maker on his wing. That being said, he had his best season so far at center iirc.
He looks incredibly snake-bit right now, getting chances, working hard but missing left and right. He clearly cares a lot, they call him the workhorse from Whitehorse for a reason. Also, whenever he plays for Canada, his troubles seem to be gone.
If you want my opinion, he's the latest edition of your Sabres thoroughbred foal that's been relied on in a leadership role way too early without a real veteran teammate to learn from and lean on.
Which results in frustrating underperformance while everyone can see the talent. It's a pattern in Buffalo, see Eichel, Reinhart, Mittelstadt, even ROR to a degree.
The contract doesn't do him any favors right now, but he's far from ruined.
Cozens has always reminded me a little bit of Kesler. I think that was even a somewhat common "projection" for him in the draft. But i think you're also right, in that Buffalo hasn't really been a fertile proving ground for talented young players with some issues. Often pressed into too much, too soon, before they'd even found their own footing properly. Whereas Kesler...he took
forever to finally "figure it out" offensively in Vancouver. He was basically just a third line "checking center" for ages...before he figured out how to be a goal scorer.
And even that was largely just Powerplay stuff, and he was consistently frustrating to find good linemates for. He never
really meshed with
anyone that well. Everyone always mused about the idea of him playing with that great "veteran playmaking winger". Never really got the chance to see if it'd work. But his actual best results mostly just came with guys like Mason Raymond who would skate around everywhere and fall over, and Chris Higgins who just sorta invested himself in grinding it out and supporting the play. Even Mikael Samuelsson who was the definition of a "shoot the puck always" anti-playmaker. The common theme being...all guys who were very similar hard working, responsible two-way players who could handle those minutes. So sometimes you never really know how a line's chemistry might come together...even if it
seems like Cozens probably needs a real "playmaking winger".
